Word: saigon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Nguyen Van Thieu has never been a demonstrative sort, but last week he was clearly elated by President Nixon's address about the war. "It is the greatest and most brilliant speech I have ever known a United States President to make," said Thieu. His exuberance was understandable. Saigon has always bridled at the Viet Nam alternatives discussed in the U.S., such as a cease-fire or massive withdrawals by a specified date-and Nixon called for none of these. Though he refrained from mentioning or endorsing the Saigon regime, his promise that the U.S. would not precipitously abandon...
While Thieu and his colleagues congratulated themselves, U.S. military men in Saigon matched up their on-the-spot view of the war with Nixon's assessment, which had filtered through the layers of State Department and White House bureaucracy. The consensus was that the President was generally close to the mark, though optimistic. If the military in Saigon had any reservation about the speech, it concerned the favorable statistics that Nixon cited-which could be reversed in a painfully short time if the Communists once more decided to intensify the conflict...
...explained that Nixon should not tie American withdrawal to Saigon's schedule for increasing its military strength. "We'll never know whether the South Vietnamese are capable of defending themselves [until we say] 'we're getting out, my friends.' President Nixon has not yet grasped this...
...seems very likely that in the months ahead the logic of our internal predicament will impel an accelerating withdrawal from Viet Nam that may well at some point put unbearable strains on the present fragile government in Saigon. This remains, as it has long been, the most vulnerable center of potential breakage-and we should be under no illusions that in a pervasive climate of sauve qui pent a successor government could be deterred from making a rapid deal with the North very largely on the North's own terms...
...Saigon government, which claims that the Communists have killed 25,000 civilians since 1957 and abducted another 46,000, has made negligible propaganda use of the massacre. In Hue it has not had to. Says Colonel Le Van Than, the local province chief: "After Tet, the people realized that the Viet Cong would kill them, regardless of political belief." That fearful thought haunts many South Vietnamese, particularly those who work for their government or for the Americans. With the U.S. withdrawal under way, the massacre of Hue might prove a chilling example of what could lie ahead...